Anyone have a Twitter to Old Fogie phrasebook?

[ukscone]

Starting to be confuzzled with some of these new fangled abbreviations that the young 'un use on that Twitter thing.

Does anyone have a Twitter to Old Fogie phrase book or translator program?

[Lynbarn]

This might help: http://transl8it.com/

[liz]

Someone on Twitter just told me I was alienating potential customers by being snide (all I'd done was point them - politely - at the FAQ after being bombarded with…FAQs).

Can't help but feel that that's *exactly* the sort of customer we ought to be alienating; I'm glad he's identified a way to do it.

[johnbeetem]

liz said:


Can't help but feel that that's *exactly* the sort of customer we ought to be alienating; I'm glad he's identified a way to do it.


The great Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko used to get angry phone calls from subscribers who objected to something he wrote in his latest column.  When he had enough, he'd say (IIRC):


Well, if that's the way you feel we'll just have to cancel your subscription.


The caller would sputter "you can't do that!" and Royko would insist that he could and would — though he never did, of course.

[grumpyoldgit]

Urbandictionary.com is good as well. I always use it when people use acronyms I haven't come across before. It will also widen your vocabulary and introduce you to a whole new level of obscenity and profanity!

[ukscone]

I was actually trying to decipher what I thought was an abbreviation but it turns out that it was just the person's initials sitting on a shared twitter account who retweeted one of my tweets.

I actually prefer what I thought it was though.

LKS == Local Knowledge Spillover (for this little tips and tricks that people post that you want to favourite and retweet) I think i'll try to make it a common twitter/irc abbreviation

[Andre_P]

–pragma grumpy_git_enabled

IMHO it"s our generation that invented the entire range of Smileys " : – ) " , Froggies (see Kate Kingman University of Warwick 1989-1992) " : ) " , Cows (Can"t remember what a cow looks like) and other graphical forms.

However it is of a significantly older generation (IIRC) that developed the shortened versions (though possibly as it was gentler age WTF might not have existed) of various text, ie those that used the Telex or TWX machines, starting back in the 1920"s. Baud cost money those days and you did what you needed to do to shorten safely a message.

Therefore it is highly unlikely that the present YOUF of today have been able to invent some shortening of text that has not already been created and  used in a sincerely sarcastic yet involuntarily polite way against said YOUF by grumpy old gits like myself.

I will revel on the day that said YOUF actually understand the insult

"I expect a priapic door mouse could make a better point"

If I may be so bold as to plagurise, personally I use Twitter to throw my shallow callous personality into sharp relief on an international scale.

It"s been a bad day and I am not in a good mood.

Basic upshot don"t worry about Twitter speak, use the stuff that your followers will understand and to heck with the rest of them

– pragma grumpy_git_disabled

[Lynbarn]

Andre_P said:


I will revel on the day that said YOUF actually understand the insult

"I expect a priapic door mouse could make a better point"


ROTFLMAO! as the youf might say

[ukscone]

Andre_P said:



However it is of a significantly older generation (IIRC) that developed the shortened versions (though possibly as it was gentler age WTF might not have existed) of various text, ie those that used the Telex or TWX machines, starting back in the 1920"s. Baud cost money those days and you did what you needed to do to shorten safely a message.


I used to do support for the tested telex/swift dept. in a bank and actually wrote some telex handling software for early PC's for a publisher of arabic b2b books in Northhamptonshire & we won't talk about the er er um er borrowing of the Telex network via the IPSS backdoor but I still find myself using Telex codes/shorthand on occasion

[Andre_P]

@Lynbarn: if I've raised a smile then my work here is done

@ukscone: wow, I am not worthy, the best I ever got to do was a talk session to a guy in a university in Australia while I was in Warwick in 1989

[ukscone]

Andre_P said:



@ukscone: wow, I am not worthy, the best I ever got to do was a talk session to a guy in a university in Australia while I was in Warwick in 1989


Yeah lots of fun to be had in the good old days.

X.25 country code +9+telex number iirc got you onto the telex network

French/Canadian X.25 country code + Minitel numeric address got you a backdoor into a Minitel chat room

Lots of company computers hung onto JANET. For some reason both Vodaphone's billing system and Pfizer's computers were hung off JANET

Damn I am starting to feel old, achey and nostalgic

NNNN

[Burngate]

Andre_P said:


However it is of a significantly older generation (IIRC) that developed the shortened versions (though possibly as it was gentler age WTF might not have existed) of various text, ie those that used the Telex or TWX machines, starting back in the 1920"s. Baud cost money those days and you did what you needed to do to shorten safely a message.



I was under the impression that it started in the Titanic days - Marconi and the Morse code, speeding up coms.

Of course, before the penny post, when the recipient had to pay, some people put cryptic messages on the outside of their letter. The recipient saw it, read it, then refused to pay to recieve the letter. That's why they invented "sender pays" post.

[paulie]

I just thought you sent an empty envelope:
"no news is good news"
Hatches/matches/despatches? Write about it then post, recipient pays &reads.

Reminds me:
"sorry about your loss Mrs smith, what"s your announcement for our paper?"
"Fred"s dead"
"its 5 words minimum"
"Fred"s dead.Car for sale"

[scubaguy]

Andre_P said:


I was under the impression that it started in the Titanic days - Marconi and the Morse code, speeding up coms.


I think it was a bit before Titanic - Marconi only invented a reliable way of transmitting wireless 1896 onwards.  The good old telegraph office started in 1845/46.

[scubaguy]

Sorry Burngate, I deleted the wrong but of the attribution in the Quote.

8 + 20 - my the sums are getting hard

[Chromatix]

I think Titanic's contribution to communications was more along the lines of ensuring that all passenger ships had radios and 24/7 listening watch of them.  Also hastened the standardisation of SOS - almost everyone knows the Morse for that as it's easy to remember - over (IIRC) CQD, a transition which was already in progress.

In fact SOS is so commonly known that you'd be forgiven for thinking that's what the default Nokia message ringer spells out.  In fact it spells SMS - only two dashes.

CQ is still used by itself, along with many other abbreviations, in the amateur radio community - as an invitation to chat.  Indeed the many abbreviations starting with CQ were the main reason for the change to SOS, which then stood out better.